


A Cigarette in December

by Jillypups



Series: Tumblr Wedding Prompts [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ANOTHER WEDDING PROMPT, Bronnaery, F/M, HNNNGGGHH, I love these two so hard, Oh look, also:, hmmmm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4778309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Wedding Prompt #27<br/>“i’m a runaway bride/groom and you’re driving my getaway car”</p><p>Gifted to Stormsqueen on Tumblr for the prompt, and for being such a fabulous Tumblr buddy and Rickeen shipper.<br/>And to Swimmingfox for being all like, HEY I WANT ANOTHER FIC TOMORROW because she was JOKING but I TOOK IT SERIOUSLY. And also because BUDDIES</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/128874173418/a-cigarette-in-december-for-stormsqueen-tumblr">Picset</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [swimmingfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/gifts).



It says _NO SMOKING_ on a little plaque inside the vintage Bentley, but he’s not sitting in the driver’s seat right now, so Bronn leans against the hood of the black rental and cups his hand around his lighter when he flicks it. It’s a sharp inhale, full of cigarette smoke and the biting December morning, but he pretends the smoke carries heat inside his body, winces against the sting of wind when it cuts across his face.

 He’s one of several chauffeurs out here on the wide semi-circle drive in front of the church, though the others stay tucked inside their cars. Bronn has to shake his head because it’s only the rich bitches that keep the drivers standing outside on cold days, stamping their feet like horses to keep warm. He’s been driving for his friend’s company almost twenty years now, ever since he got out of the clink as a kid, and not once has anyone this high up on the hog ever let them leave their posts.

 _It’s not like you can smoke in a church though, or that I even belong in one,_ he chuckles to himself, gazing down at his lit cigarette  a moment before he takes another long drag, eyes to the iron sky as he exhales another cloud to add to the others choking out the blue and the sun. As if by his very addition to the buildup above, a slow fall of fat flakes comes drifting down, barely discernable against the whiteout until they’re nearly upon him. They are big lazy things that are so fluffy and full they don’t even melt right away when they light on the shoulders of his black overcoat, when they leave cold kisses on his face.

“I’ll be damned,” he says with a squint, cigarette bobbing in his mouth as he gazes skyward. A flake lands just under his brow, and it is so snared in his lash line it very nearly blinds him. Bronn squeezes his eyes shut, trapping melted snow and smoke there when he ducks his head and forgets to take the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Son of a bitch,” he mutters, rubbing at the offended eye with the back of his gloved hand. He is so distracted by the sting he tries to blink away, that for a moment he doesn’t register what he’s seeing when he finally looks up.

The door of the church has slammed open with all the fury of a WWE champion, but it’s a tiny slip of a woman there instead. She looks like a snowflake herself, one of those ballerina fairies from the Nutcracker in a white dress with lacy sleeves and a gauzy veil, soft feminine things from a world Bronn has never comprehended. He’s musing over the strangeness of the weather and the strangeness of the sight when finally he realizes she’s the bride he drove here. She’s pissed, too, a furious expression mixed into the makeup on her face, such a direct contrast to the smiles and giggles with which she rode over earlier. He’s content to be a fly on the wall, to watch her look left and right as the anger chases itself around her features. But when she gathers up the long train behind her and throws it over an arm, when she starts running towards him he takes the cigarette out of his mouth and shoves himself off of the car to stand straight.

“Hey, sweetheart, you all right?” he says, as conversational as he can be though _this_ is no everyday occurrence, runs a hand over his overgrown hair to sweep it back out of his face. “Want a cigarette before the big moment?” he says, raising his eyebrows encouragingly as he digs out the pack from his pocket.

Bride Tyrell, as the work ticket he got this morning called her, stares at him when she comes to a stand just in front of him, her chest heaving from running in such a cinched up dress. Her mouth hangs open a moment before she closes it, two petals pressed together as she shakes her head violently. He thinks of kids being asked to eat their vegetables, and he’s about to crack a joke and tell her wedding vows shouldn’t taste like spinach when she bursts into tears.

“No I do not want a _cigarette,_ ” she says, voice hitching up higher and higher with each word. “What I _want_ is to not have wasted five years of my _life_ on that bastard. Do you know what he was doing just now? He was fucking my maid of honor in the ladies room, 20 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start,” she says. “And then, _then_ my mom and grandma come in after they hear me screaming at them, and they tell me to _calm down._ Calm down, they said, because it’s a $75,000 wedding and they don’t want the family to lose face. Can you believe that?”

All Bronn hears is a price tag heftier than his mom’s mortgage was when he was a kid. But she takes his stunned silence for understanding and so she nods, her mascara-ringed eyes wide.

“I know. I know, I can’t believe it either. My fiancé, my friends, my family, all against me. I’m like, are you kidding me with this?” she mutters, shaking her head now as she worries her lower lip with her teeth, as she stares off into the distance. Finally she narrows her eyes, her pretty face turning fox-clever as she lifts her gaze to him. “You know what, on second thought, I think I will have that cigarette.”

Instead of taking the pack that’s still in his hand, because he’s too dumbstruck from this conversation to have put it away, she slides her hand against his, fingers atop his, and she plucks the already lit smoke from his grasp. Bride Tyrell spins on her heel, flinging the train of her dress off and away from her, and it casts out like a lovely fishing net, ready to snare anything and anybody, willing or no. It makes him smile before he frowns.

“Hey, honey, where are you going?”

“ _Honey_ is going to burn that fucking church down, that’s where _honey’s_ going,” she shouts over her shoulder, her dress dragging a black path through the settling snow.

“Now, now, now,” he says, sprinting to catch up with her, and he catches her with a gloved grasp on her wrist. “Let’s not- you don’t want to set any shit on fire, okay? _Believe_ me, prison’s no place for a pretty girl like you, okay?”

Her eyebrows arch at his words but she says nothing, only stands there in defiance a moment as she lifts his cigarette to her mouth and inhales. She looks like a film noir heroine or femme fatale, here with her smudged makeup and gown, with a halo of smoke around her pale upswept hair, with the backwards flick of his cigarette that sends it landing on the bottom church step.

“Fine,” she says at last, chin held high, and he grins.

Bronn leads her back to the Bentley, holding onto her forearm until she sighs with a trembling sort of sob, resting her head on his shoulder and tucking her arm into the crook of his. Her fingers brush just inside the cuff of his sleeve, and on the span of skin between the overcoat and his gloves he can tell how cold she is. Bronn feels like an asshole all of a sudden.

“Jesus, you’re freezing,” he says, shrugging away from her to shoulder his way out of his overcoat so he can cast it out and around her. It settles like a heavy cloud over the white lightness of her, and he reckons it’s one more thing added to the weight she’s suddenly carrying on her shoulders today.

“Thanks,” she sniffles, inhaling deeply before she gazes up at the sky. “Hey, it’s snowing. I didn’t even realize it.”

“Yeah,” Bronn laughs. “Imagine that.”

“They say rain on your wedding day means good luck. I wonder what snow means. I never read anything that mentioned it,” she says, and he watches the length of her throat as she looks up at the snow falling, watches the grip of her fingers as she clutches his lapels shut over her chest to keep out the chill. It’s a jacket that goes to his shins but on her it’s almost touching the ground. Her nose is red, the deep pink of an unripe cherry. Bronn stamps his feet to keep warm, crosses his arms over his chest to make it look like boredom.

“I guess they probably couldn’t print ‘ _Cunt fucks a bridesmaid’_ in the pamphlet,” he says after a moment.

Bride Tyrell rights her head and lowers her gaze from the sky to stare at him, wide eyed with tears on her pale cheeks, but then she laughs, a huff of incredulity before it turns into high peals of laughter that make her toss back her head. Clouds of breath escape her as she laughs and laughs, and Bronn watches her, grinning until he has to laugh too. It’s not as funny to him, not really, but then again he’s not hanging by an emotional thread, here.

“I needed that, thank you,” she says when she’s finally mastered herself, sticking a hand out from inside her coat to pat her blonde hair self-consciously, though when her fingers find one of the little white buds pinned in there, she pulls it out and looks at it with disgust. “So what’s your name, anyways?” _Flick_ goes the flower to the snowed over asphalt at their feet.

“I’m Bronn,” he says, watching her mouth as it shapes his name with a smile.

“Hi, Bronn. I’m–”

“Margaery Tyrell, what the _hell_ do you think you’re doing out here?”

Bronn lifts his gaze and Margaery looks over her shoulder as a regal ice queen of a woman comes storming out of the side entrance to the church. She’s got her hands squeezed into fists, and he’s thinking of the WWE all over again as she stalks her way across the snow covered side yard. He glances to the row of cars behind his, and though none of the other drivers get out, half of them are apparently taking videos on their phones. _Thanks a lot, boys._

“Well I’m definitely not getting married, that’s for damn sure,” Margaery says, hot with anger, and he wishes he had a little bit of it himself, it’s so fucking cold out here.

“Oh yes you are, young lady, your father and I did not spend all year and nearly a hundred thousand dollars for you to bail out last minute,” the older woman says, her rich voice a deep, authoritative boom.

“He’s the one who _bailed_ when he started screwing other women, mother, so go blame Joffrey for this, okay?” Margaery says with another hitched-breath tremble.

Bronn steps to her side instinctively. _Blame it on being raised by a single mom_ , he thinks, but the sound of ladies crying doesn’t jive with him, and now he’s found himself in the middle of this.

“You are getting back inside that church, young lady, and you are going to do so _now_ ,” Mother of the Bride says. “We can work all of this out after the reception.”

Margaery spins around, is so clearly surprised to see him standing beside her instead of behind that she nearly collides with him, and a hand flies up to steady herself against his chest. He can feel the chill of her palm through his button down and undershirt.

“Please get me the fuck out of here,” she says. “I can’t go back in there.”

“You got it, duchess,” he says, and without another word he slumps a shoulder, bends a knee to reach down into his coat she’s wearing and get his keys from the pocket. It brings his face directly in front of hers, and though he’s got some years on her and knows his isn’t the prettiest mug, he still gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “You’re gonna be all right.”

“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?” the older woman says as she starts to cross the drive towards them.

“What the bride wants, the bride gets,” Bronn says with a shrug as he opens the front door of the Bentley to let Margaery in.

He quickly jogs around the front of the car once she’s bundled in, long white dress and old black overcoat, the smell of perfume and the scent of his brand of cigarettes. He’s got one boot in the footwell of the driver’s side, one hand on the wheel when Margaery’s mother shouts a string of obscenities at him.

“I will have your job for this, you white trash scum,” she seethes, and just as she makes it to Margaery’s passenger door, he hits the _Lock_ button on his side.

“I don’t give a stone cold shit, lady,” he says, grinning as her mouth drops open when he flips her the bird over the roof of the car.

Bronn slams the door shut once he’s folded his long body into the seat behind the wheel, and Margaery’s mother is a rapid fire staccato of fists beating on the sides of the car as they pull out of the drive. He’s quiet for several minutes as he leaves the church property and merges into weekend traffic, because every time he glances at her she seems to only burrow deeper and deeper into his coat.

“Are you really going to lose your job?” she says after some time, head turning so her cheek rests on the seat as she looks up at him. Bronn laughs and shakes his head.

“My buddy Sandor owns the company, my job is just fine. Don’t worry yourself about that,” he says.

“Okay, good. I’d hate for you to get fired for being my hero today,” she says.

“Hero, huh? And here all I did was stop a beautiful girl from setting a church on fire and possibly bitch slapping her own mother.”

Margaery laughs with a shiver, hugging herself inside his jacket as she turns to gaze out the window. _Fuck, that’s right,_ he thinks, flipping on the heater and setting it to high. Once it’s up and cooking she finally shrugs out of his coat, twists and stretches to set it on the back seat when she asks him where she should put it. Her hands rest limply in her lap; there is an unpinned curl that corkscrews down from the side of her hairdo; she smells like clean sheets and something summery like roses or peach wine.

“You feeling any better?” he says after a moment, clearing his throat and looking back to the road.

“I am so mad I can hardly see straight, and I just want to get out of this stupid dress. But I don’t have my keys, and then he _lives_ there with me now, and the last thing I want to see is any of his shit,” she says, heaving a sigh. “Sorry.”

“Don’t gotta apologize to me. I’d be pissed too, in your shoes,” he says, bracing a hand against her seat as he looks back before changing lanes. “Listen, Sandor’s got a girlfriend, Sansa. They’re my roommates, and I bet with weather like this she’ll be stuck at home. She’s a real sweetheart, and you look about her size,” he says, giving her a scrutinizing squint that makes her blush and roll her eyes. “At least, without the veil and poofy lace, you are.”

“Will you take me home then, Bronn? A new friend and a change of clothes are exactly what I need right now,” she says with a sigh, and then she turns back to him with a shy smile that doesn’t look like it normally lives on such a clever, pretty face. “After all, I’ve already found my hero.”

“I’ll take you wherever you want, Margaery,” he says.

“Please, call me Margie. Only my mom calls me Margaery, and she is the _last_ person I want to think about. Well, the second to last,” she says, making him laugh.

“Margie it is,” he chuckles, eyes lifting back to the road when the light changes.

There’s been plenty of times when women have asked him to take them home, drunk and hanging off of him, and he’s always said _No, baby, let’s go to yours_. But today he’s someone’s hero, today he’s Hero of the Bride with a high class girl sitting by his side. It makes him sit straighter in his seat when the light changes from red to green, makes him smile when he thinks she’s not looking.

More often than not, though, she is.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/134865741113/a-cigarette-in-december-chapter-2-written-for)
> 
>  
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> 
> So I changed Tommy Flanagan to Luke Evans because my sweet bb Tommy is 50 and that's a bit too old. SORRY, if you absolutely hate it just forget Luke and think of Tommy, lol.

“ _Brrr_ ,” Margie says as she switches feet on the cold kitchen tile, legs a riot of pebbled skin, shiver a snake up and down her spine.  It’s the coldest she’s felt since walking away from her wedding and a cheating fiancé.

She’s in thick knobbly socks that go halfway up her shins but she still doesn’t have much of her clothes here yet, so she’s got pajama shorts and an old college sweatshirt doing their best to keep her warm. Not that they’re doing the trick. That’s what the mug of tea is for, and once she’s poured boiling water over a sachet of earl grey and a packet of sugar, she practically bounds back to her bed on the sofa. It’s been her little home for a couple of weeks now, ever since that disaster of a wedding, ever since Bronn bundled her up like a woebegone princess and whisked her away.

Margaery smiles. She’s always felt like luck’s been more or less on her side her entire life, and her would-be wedding actually sort of proved it. Yes, the day was ruined and a feud sparked between her parents and her that shows no signs of stopping. But she lost all the liars in her life and gained a few new friends she already feels like she can trust. Sansa, with her sweet, summery smiles than can almost warm up a room like this one. Sandor with his brooding shadows, the storm-cloud edge to his woman’s light. And then there is Bronn. Her smile broadens.

Bronn with the long ranging stride and the stretched out sweaters, dark eyes and amused looks, scent of tobacco and leather and wool, the kind of man who calls a dive bar his second home. Bronn who pulled out every last scrap of spare sheet and pillow and quilt for her, Bronn who made Sansa and Sandor look at one another with raised eyebrows when he insisted Margie stay with them that first night with her wedding dress hanging on his door. And then the next night and the next, until everyone stopped asking, even her.  

“Jesus, why is it so  _cold,_ ” she mutters, setting down her mug on the end table as she chafes her hands together.

It’s an older apartment here on the scruffier edge of downtown, complete with old everything. Original wood floors and small ancient stove that looks like it came out of a haunted dollhouse, window panes warped from the pull of gravity and time, and a nasty old radiator that reminds Margie of childhood monsters. Useless too, when she finally risks a fingertip to the surface and can only feel freezing cold metal.  _Perfect. Just perfect,_  she thinks as she hurries back to her small nest of spare blankets and flat sheets.  _Everyone else is at their jobs with their fancy central heating, and I’m stuck here with a pause button on my life._ She bundles herself up, burying her hands inside her sleeves, tucking her legs beneath her and the blankets under them, but it does little good. Even sips of tea only scald her tongue and leave her feeling thinned out and shivery.

 _It’s the windows behind the sofa,_ she thinks, glancing back at the snowy urban landscape behind her.

The apartment is the lower half of an old Victorian house, and right now she’s wishing it was on the top floor where it’s warmer from all the rising heat. Still, it’s a pretty view: glossy, black street fuzzed over with snow that won’t stop falling and icy tree boughs that look made of spun sugar and glass. Cars roll by slowly through the slush with an oddly satisfying sound of tires she can hear from here. There’s a flit and flutter of red when a cardinal lands on the bird feeder hanging on the porch’s eave, a vivid splash of color on an otherwise monochromatic canvas.

Margie smiles, leans forward, huffs her breath on the window pane and doodles a heart in the fog amongst the frost.  _Like the color of you,_  she thinks. The cardinal flies off at the motion, bird feeder a tumultuous sway from the sudden departure, and she frowns because that bird has the right of it. It’s too damned cold to be huddled in an unheated room by a freezing cold window. Biting her lip and still frowning, she digs her phone out from the mass of blankets and scrolls through her contacts, looking for one of the newest.

**Margie:** Hi there, it’s me Margie! Hope I’m not bugging you.

Her teeth do a corn-cob bite on her lip as she stares at her phone, waiting for the little ellipses. She realizes with a sort of incredulous humor that her heart is beating like she’s just ridden a roller coaster. She inhales when he replies, and exhales with a grin when she reads it.

**Bronn:** I know who it is, duchess. What’s up?

**Margie:** :) Well good morning anyways. The heater isn’t working. Is there anything I can do?

**Bronn:** Hard to say without taking a look at it. Is the water coming out of the sink?

**Margie:** Yes, I took a bath and made tea already.

**Bronn:** What about the other radiators? One in my room and one in S & S’s.

Other heaters? Margie feels like an idiot, all of a sudden. She types for him to hang on, gathers the covers around her shoulders and opens the door to Sandor and Sansa’s room, which is an amusing scatter of two distinct personalities. Barbells and a baseball bat in one corner with a black and white photograph of an old stadium hanging nearby; a bouquet of dried flowers hanging over one nightstand by a thick, satin ribbon and a pale blue comforter in their bed with tiny stars embroidered on it. More importantly, though, it is noticeably warmer, palpably so in here, and the feel of heated air on her cheeks makes her sigh. With a tiptoe out of there she closes the door and heads to Bronn’s room.

It’s another rush of warmth and the smell of heat when she steps inside his room for the first time, half drawn shades and muted winter morning washing it in cool, muzzy tones. It’s such a relief from the cold that she takes two more steps in until her blankets brush the corner of his hastily made bed. There’s a single nightstand with a lamp and an alarm clock, a science fiction paperback on top of a big hardback that, she is delighted to discover when she bends down to examine its spine, is an old dictionary.

 **Margie:** Oh my god it’s so warm in here!

**Bronn:** Must be something with the valves in the front room. Feeling industrious?

She raises her eyebrows, because she knows as much as the next person that she’s something of a princess.  _But so does he,_ she thinks, because it’s evident in the way he walks around her, in the way he gave her his coat and swept her away from the church. He knows it and he doesn’t seem to mind it, and there’s something about that she likes immensely.

**Margie:** Not really. I can just leave the bedroom doors open, if that’s okay, until you all get home.

**Bronn:** You go on and do that but I’ll be right there. It’s gotten fucked up in the past and I can fix it. Pardon my French.

**Margie:** No worries. I’ve been known to speak French from time to time. ;)

**Bronn:** I’ll bet. Be there in an hour

An hour. Well, she’ll be damned if she spends another thirty  _seconds_  in that icebox of a room. Margie hops out of his room and across the faded carpet on the balls of her feet towards the sofa, grabs her tea and makes her way back to Bronn’s room. There’s no way she’d invade another woman’s lair when she shares it with her man, but she has exchanged enough friendly looks and warm smiles with Bronn to think maybe he wouldn’t mind a mini invasion in his lone-wolf den.  _A teensy, tiny mission of exploration_ , she thinks, pulling back his covers to drag the myriad of her own in with her, and when she’s finally ensconced the bed looks like a huge, plaid patterned shell of some mythically large tortoise. And she cannot help but giggle at it as she rubs her socked feet together.

Minutes stack up like firewood to help warm her, and soon enough she is so toasty her eyes slide shut. It smells like him in here, not so much the cigarettes but the wool of him and whatever soap he uses, and maybe some hint of cologne. Nothing like the sharp sting of whatever Joff used to douse himself in. Something  _warmer,_  and warm is all she’s interested in right now. Warmth and wool. Leather and smoke. And then she is drowsing, cozied up in all of those things, finding more comfort in them and in here than she’s felt in two weeks. Maybe longer; it’s hard to be happy in a toxic relationship, though lord knows she tried.  _I tried so hard and all I got was betrayal and abandonment._  One more luxurious, stretching inhale, one more sigh out with the scent of a man to curl up against, and then she’s asleep.  

 “Hey. Hey, duchess. Margie, wake up, hon.”

Her shoulder moves beneath the weight of a long fingered hand, and she shakes her head in response, dragging the pillow closer to her, soft flannel that even  _smells_  plaid.  _Or was it wool? Definitely Bronn though,_  she thinks with a sleepy whimper and a deeper burrow.

“Margie girl, you’re in my bed,” he says, because now she knows it’s him, voice like black coffee, lifted up on the edges with amusement like curls of steam.

“It’s so warm, though,” she murmurs, eyes still shut because she’s sort of mortified to be caught like this, eyes still shut because it’s just that wonderfully comfortable in here. She feels like how she was in grade school, refusing to get out of bed on winter mornings. “It was  _so_  cold, Bronn.”

“I know it was. I just barely got my hands warm after I fixed the valve.”

“Oh, are you cold too?” she says, twisting from within her burrow, flipping the hair out of her eyes with one hand while she pulls the blankets away from her face with the other.

He’s shaking his head with a grin on his face, arms folded across his chest, sleeves of his sweater pulled up to his forearms, and despite her drowsiness and embarrassment about being so utterly busted, Margie grins back.  Somewhere between the church and this very moment, Bronn got cute. Real cute.

“Yeah, a bit. But it looks like a little mouse stole the only warm room I’ve got. Not to mention every damned blanket in the whole apartment.”

The white fadeout light of a snowstorm comes through the window, turns his mostly black hair to mostly silver on one side, makes him look like he’s built out of driftwood and a fisherman’s sweater.  _Warmth and wool,_ she thinks, and then she makes an effort to change the nature of her smile, hoping he will understand her, here. 

“Little mouses like to share, though,” she says, closing her eyes once, the faintest bat of her lashes, before she looks up at him and his broadening smile.  

“Oh yeah?” he says slowly, gaze flicking down when she scoots over to the empty, cold side of the bed. “And they even offer a man his own side of the bed to boot, huh.”

“Yep. Nothing beats this, believe me. You’re going to want to try it out for yourself, but there’s no way  _I’m_  leaving.”

“Says the mouse to the cat,” he grins, arms still across his chest even when she tugs the pile of blankets down.

“You don’t scare me, buster. You’re my hero after all, remember? Unless you keep standing there letting out all the yummy heat,” she says.

“I’m still in my shoes,” he says dubiously, but he laughs when she tells him absolutely no shoes allowed on the bed.

He sits after a moment, the bed a slow dip and depress as he hunches over to take off his shoes, and Margie studies what she can see of him. He’s not as tall as his roommate but he’s still far taller than she is, and his back bends like a bow as he takes off one shoe and then the other. She swallows, suddenly realizing what exactly she’s asked him and how it may have come across, wondering if the way his sweater and undershirt have ridden up is because he’s about to pull them off over his head, but then he straightens and the hems fall back to their rightful place. Relief and disappointment mingle, a far stranger cocktail than her cold tea and sugar.

“All right, fine,” he says, turning with the up and over swing of his legs, his stocking feet and cuffs of his jeans disappearing under the covers. “Let’s find out what the big fuss is about.”

She tells him he’s doing it wrong, just lying there, and goes so far as to toss her hair over her shoulder and sit up to tuck him in. He humors her with an ill-concealed smirk on his face when she drags one two three four five layers on top of him, finally laughing outright when she pats him on the chest like he’s a job well done. Margie grins down at him where he’s got his arms folded between the back of his head and his pillow, and he’s one final huff of laughter before it smooths out and the room is silent. The air is quiet between them, even though there’s something else there now, instead of the simple sound of his amusement over her.

“You’re the one letting all the heat out now, Margie,” he says quietly, nodding to where she’s still sitting up more or less in the center of his bed with her legs folded beneath her, the covers half dragged away behind her.

“Oh, right,” she says. “Well, if you want the  _full_  experience, then I guess I have no choi- wait, no, not like a bedroom experi- I meant the full experience is _warm_.”

Bronn bursts out laughing.

“They usually are,” he says dryly, closing his eyes and turning his head with a huff of laughter when she swats him.

“That is  _not_  what I meant,” she says hotly, though she’s grinning now despite the flush on her cheeks.  _Warm indeed._  “I meant like, under the covers. Like, you know, how you said. Like a mouse in a burrow.” Or did she say that?

“Well come on and burrow then, before you get yourself all worked up. Definitely wouldn’t want to get a woman all worked up in my bed  _before_  the full experience,” he says, and now they’re both laughing.

It settles down soon enough to cleared throats and hums as she slowly scoots back down under the covers and pulls them up and over her, the previously untouched sheets on this side of the bed a shock of cool on her bare legs. The pillow is cooler too, though it was the one she had clutched to her chest.  _Oh, god, he found me like that._  Part of her doesn’t care.

“It’s not too bad,” he says lightly, and she turns her head to face him as he gazes noncommittally up at the ceiling. “Definitely toasty.”

“That’s because I warmed up your side for you,” she smiles, biting her lip when he turns his head to gaze at her.

“You cold over there, duchess?” Dark eyes a wrinkle in the corners, always amused, always laughing, though they’re steady on her right now.

“Yes,” she lies with a whisper.

“Well, come on, then,” he says, scooting over just slightly, unfolding one arm from beneath his head and holding it open and out by way of invitation. “If you can share then so can I.”

“Okay,” she murmurs, inching closer tiny wriggle by tiny wriggle with the tremble of a true mouse as she crosses some invisible line here in the flannel of his sheets and the depth of his scent.

He sighs, almost inaudibly, when she finally fits herself against his side, her belly to his hip and her head on that soft space between a man’s shoulder and his chest. It was narrow and shallow on Joff and he hated being slept on. But right now it’s just about perfect, his sweater the slightest rub against her cheek, and she blinks with a smile when he moves his other arm from behind his head, his hand resting on his chest a few inches from her nose. Margie stretches out her legs, but her toes don’t even brush the tops of his feet. When he lightly, lightly brings his other arm up and around her and rests his hand on the cap of her shoulder, she sighs, too.

“Not bad at all,” he murmurs finally, long after the rise and fall of his breathing have started tugging her back to sleep.

“Mmhmm,” she says all sleepy rumple mumble, barely registering the faintest touch of his fingers in her hair. “I knew you would like it,” she sighs, untucking her arm from between their bodies.

When she slides her hand up his ribs, pushing it under his palm, he folds his fingers around her without hesitation. “Oh, I do.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/135319618078/a-cigarette-in-december-chapter-3-written-for)

It’s cold enough tonight that Bronn can’t tell where smoke ends and the hot puff of his breath begins, but it’s still not cold enough to make him put out his cigarette before he’s good and ready. Not when Margie’s inside the apartment hollering at her mother over the phone, the rise and fall and crack and sob of the whole thing loud enough to hear through the thin window behind him. Times like this demand privacy especially where women are concerned, at least in his limited experience. And so he leans a shoulder against the wooden post of the front porch, cigarette dangling from his mouth and hands in his pocket as he gazes across the street at all the fairy lights making the snowy yards glow like soft blankets of color.

It is Christmas Eve. Bronn is no stranger to family fights over the holidays; it’s as familiar to him as breathing. It’s why he notices straight away when the muffled sounds of one side to an argument die down and it’s suddenly quiet out here.  _Now_  he’s finished with his cigarette, and he sucks in one more lungful of smoke before tossing the thing in the old flower pot he uses as an ashtray, red-orange ember an instant hiss and fizzle to black amidst the snow collected at the bottom.

Margie starts, double-takes when he opens the door, falters and fumbles when she tries to give him a smile, but in the end there’s one there for him, small and wan, pale like the gauzy long sweater she has on. She’s standing in the center of the room staring at the tiny Christmas tree in the corner, the edge of her phone pressed to her mouth like it’s a white chocolate candy bar she’s about to take a bite out of. Except she’s the little drizzle of sweetness here, lately.  _Leave it to you to bring home a bride,_  Sandor had said that first afternoon.  _Let’s see if you can keep her, now._  Bronn doesn’t think he’s done much by way of keeping her, but he hasn’t chased her off, either. No way in hell.

“Hey,” he says, closing the door behind him as he regards her a moment, pretty as a picture all lit up from the colored strands of lights on the tree. “You uh, you okay in here?” He shrugs out of his jacket and turns to hang it on one of the hooks on the back of the door, takes a step towards her, stops, takes one more.

“Yeah, I’m- I’m- I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” she says with an exhale, lowering her phone to hug herself. “I’ve never spent Christmas away from my family, but after  _that_  exchange I’m glad I am.”

“She still acting like that charming lady I met at the church?” he says. It’s attempting lightness, it’s wanting to see a real smile there on her mouth, wanting to hear her laugh instead of cry, because women like her aren’t meant to be sad, they’re meant to be adored.  _There’s probably a pedestal with her name on it somewhere._

“Yeah, and then some,” she says with a huff of halfhearted laughter, weak like watered down tea, snow melting drip by drip into a puddle on the floor. “She didn’t even wish me a Merry Christmas,” she murmurs, wincing and shaking her head.

He crosses the room before he knows what he’s doing, has an arm around her in time to catch the drop of her head against his chest. Her hair feels like silk under the scruff of his chin and the chill of his bare palm when he finally, tentatively runs his hand from the back of her head down the sweep of blonde to her shoulder.

“You’re all right,” he murmurs, gazing at the little tree Sansa picked out, frowns because he knows she probably isn’t.  _Damage control,_  he thinks, he strives. “You know, I’ve spent a bunch of Christmases by myself, it’s not so bad. Not really.”  _Good work, asshole. Remind her she’s all by her lonesome,_ because this place is empty ‘til New Year’s Day when Sandor and Sansa come back from visiting her folks upstate. There’s no big Christmas dinner, there’s no party, there’s nothing.

“I’m not alone, though,” she says with a sniff and the rise and fall of her chest as she sighs and looks up at him. “Am I, Bronny?”

“No, Margie,” he says after a moment of gazing down at her, of blinking in the low glow of tree lights and in the dawning realization that she has just given him a nickname, and however silly it is, he’s definitely been called worse. “No, you’re not.” And then he gets an idea, and then he grins. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

She draws back slightly in the small space between his chest and his arm, giving him a look of amused suspicion. Bronn shrugs.

“Go where? It’s Christmas Eve, what’s open right now?”

“Plentyof places. Well, plenty of my type of places,” he says, letting his hand slide down her shoulder blade to the low of her back before he remembers to keep his paws to himself. Bronn takes a step back, and he kind of loves the sliver of a pout he sees before she rearranges her expression.

“What kind of places are those?” she asks with a bitten-lip grin as she runs her fingers through her hair.

“I dunno, places like me, I guess,” he says with another shrug, another grin. “Fun places.”

“Well then,” she says, walking away from him to the wall her suitcase is pushed up against, crouching down on legs shaped like dreams he’s had to grab up a little toiletry bag before heading into the bathroom. “Sounds like I’m going to enjoy myself,” she says just before she shuts the door, making him laugh.

And she does, to his surprised amusement, even though it’s just an old dive bar he’s been frequenting since he was seventeen and growing out his first goatee. Pretty little Margaery Tyrell, in fancy shoes with soles so red it’s like she walked here on men’s hearts, can handle her liquor as well as he can, and she wins not one game of darts but two. But it doesn’t matter to him because she’s been smiling and laughing since they got here. A few of the old regulars have been staring since they got here too, and he can’t deny the swell of pride he felt, getting to be the guy who held the door for her as she walked in, her fuck me shoes two sets of  _taptaptap_  on the hardwood floor of a mostly empty bar.  _You’re selling yourself short if you think this place is just like you_ , she said when he took her coat and draped it over the red vinyl back of a booth in the corner.  _I think I know you well enough,_  she said when he told her she hardly knows him.

“All right, all right, so how about for every score I make that’s better than yours, you tell me something about you, and every time  _you_ make a higher score than I do,  _I’ll_  tell you something about  _me._ ”

They’re sitting across from one another in their tucked away little space, leaning towards one another on their elbows, and some crooning blues song is playing that somehow perfectly matches the neon signs hanging in all the windows. Bronn chuckles with the shake of his head, swirls his Maker’s and ice before lifting it for a swallow.

“Why don’t you just ask me?” he says, watching the way she drags a finger around the edge of her sugar-rimmed martini glass.

“Because it’s more fun when it’s a game,” she says, lifting her finger to look at the sugar coated pad of it. “And we’re here to have fun, right?”

Bronn swallows when she puts her finger in her mouth. Hastily he gets to his feet and gestures towards the dartboard. Margie just smiles beatifically up at him.

“Fine then,” he says after a moment of self-mastery and what he hopes is a stern glare. “Ladies first.”

In the end she learns that he’s a high school drop out with a GED and four speeding tickets, that he’s never owned a pet and hasn’t seen his dad since the first Nintendo came out. She finds out with a peal of jingle-bell laughter that he once broke into an apartment complex pool only to lose his swim trunks at the bottom before getting busted, and that he had to run back home buck naked. She finds out his favorite color is grey and that one drunken night he got a tattoo of Tinkerbell on his bicep. He promises to show her one of these days.

He, on the other hand, learns that she’s never lived alone in her life, having moved from the family house to the dorm and then the sorority house, to an apartment with Joff and now the couch in his living room. He learns that she once managed to talk her teachers into giving her better grades like she saw in some movie, and he learns she loves flowers of all sorts though roses are her favorites. He also learns that he’s not as good at darts as he previously thought.

“You want another one?” she asks, pointing down at his empty lowball glass as she sweeps herself out from the booth to stand beside him. The front pocket of her jeans is close enough for him to flex his fingers into and pull forward. One good, hard yank to bring her down into his lap.

Bronn clears his throat and sits back in the booth, an arm across the back of it as he looks up at her. “That’s what Uber’s for, duchess. Go on, I’ll get next round. Thank god we weren’t playing for money, is all’s I gotta say.”

Margie laughs and he watches her walk away, lets his gaze drop and drift wherever it wants. He’s thinking of naked skin and roses and what  _her_  favorite color might be, and that’s when she glances over her shoulder at him, catching him mid-stare, mid-gaze, mid mind-wander. It’s fleeting, the glitter of her smoky eyes, the kitty-cat curl of her smirk before she looks back to the bar, but the whip crack of tension is enough to make him close his eyes. It’s almost enough to make him shudder.  _Jesus,_  he thinks, pinching the bridge of his nose, shaking his head as if to shake her out of his thoughts like rain off an umbrella.

But that would be impossible.

A week ago they fell asleep in his bed with her hand tucked in his, and ever since then he’s found a thousand more little ways to sidle up closer to her like some sort of starved stray cat. And he’s not the smartest tool in the shed but he doesn’t miss when she chooses the smaller space between him and the armrest on the sofa while they watch television. He doesn’t miss the press of her fingers on his forearm as she tells him she had to borrow his shampoo when she ran out. Surely they must mean something, these touches and close quarters. He desperately hopes so, and whenever he reminds himself that she was supposed to be married to another guy almost a month ago, he closes his eyes and remembers the weight of her head here on his chest, instead.

“Look, I _said_ no, all right? So just back off, all right?”

Bronn lifts his head in time to see Margie jerk her head away from the outstretched hand of some sleaze-ball, and she scoots down the bar so suddenly she almost knocks over an empty barstool. He narrows his eyes, angles his body towards them as he watches it play out, half hoping she hauls off and slaps the prick, but instead she simply recoils again as he scoots off his stool and onto the one she nearly knocked over. Like she needs this shit after what she’s dealt with today.

“Come on, sweetie, just one drink. Or let me buy you the one you just ordered,” he says, leaning into Margie again.

Bronn is already on his feet, heading towards the bar, but when he can see that Margie is actually  _shaking_ , that’s when he grits his teeth and takes a few longer strides to bring him right next to the guy.

“That’s _my_ drink, asshole,” he says, yanking one of the empty stools away from the bar to fully insert himself between the two of them. "So if you want to buy it from me, then fine, but I don't think you're going to like the kind of attention that'll earn you."

"Hey buddy, just calm down, all right? It's Christmas, for chrissakes, who wants to be lonely on Christmas?

"You know where it's  _not_  lonely? Prison, and I have  _no_  problem going to the clink again if it means I'm taking you with me, so back the fuck off," he snarls, bringing his face mere inches from the pushy bastard. He reeks of cheap beer and Swisher Sweets, and Bronn sneers from the stink of him.

"Hey now, buddy, settle down. I didn't see a ring on her finger, okay?" he wheedles, and  _that_  is about to set him off in about three seconds, being reminded of what she’s gone through lately.

"She said _no_ , you son of a-" he says, drawing back an arm with his fist clenched.

"Bronny, it's okay," Margie says from behind him, her hand resting on his shoulder near the back of his neck. "Let's just go home, it's practically midnight anyways," she says, voice smooth and sweet like a sugar cube dissolving in bourbon.

“All right, all right,” he mutters, glaring at the guy before he turns to her, his hand at the back of her elbow as they turn from the bar.

"Yeah, Bronny, it's okay." the guy sing-songs. "Fuckin' pussy," he mutters, clearly thinking they’re out of earshot.

"Don't you talk about him like that," Margie snaps as she spins on her heel towards the guy, and it's ten bucks well spent when she snatches the glass of Maker's Mark off the bar and hurls the contents onto the guy's crotch, is a perfectly wonderful reason why they have to wait for their ride outside in the bitter cold and snow after getting kicked out.

"I don't think anyone's ever come to my rescue before," he says a few minutes later as they watch the trickle of last minute holiday traffic crawl by. It’s cold and dark, the black of sky and the white and brown of sludge and snow, the glow of streetlights and tacky décor in the storefront windows. _What a beautiful night,_ he thinks, sliding a glance her way.

"That's twice now you've come to mine," Margie says, all beaming perky triumph as she  _Brrs_  inside the coil of her scarf, chafing her hands together, her dangerous looking shoes a tall standout on the snow covered bricks. "I figure I owed you one."

"Lucky me, getting a duchess to be  _my_  hero, huh," he says, pulling his phone from his pocket when he gets a text from Uber. "There, the car's over there," he says, pointing the sedan across the street.

"Duchess? Or a mouse?" she says with a grin as she holds out her hand expectantly.

Bronn lowers his gaze to the white of her outstretched hand, palm up as if she's trying to catch the snowflakes that are starting to fall again, instead of an old nobody like him. She wiggles her fingers and stamps her feet in the snow twice before he slowly grins and slides his fingers between hers. Their hands are both cold as ice but by god, does the slide of their palms warm him up.

"Definitely a duchess," he says as she tugs him across the street towards their ride.

It’s a silent trip home for the most part, each of them gazing out of opposite windows, seemingly in their own little worlds as they sit in the backseat holding hands like a couple of kids. She turns to look at him sharply when he unlaces his fingers from hers and pulls away, a frown creasing her forehead as she gazes up at him in the passing glows of green and red traffic lights. He raises his eyebrows and lifts his arm, a question and invitation, and he grins like a smug son of a bitch when she smiles and scoots in against his side, their seatbelts the only thing keeping him from pulling her in his lap.

“So,” she says when they’re in front of his – _their –_ front porch, standing amidst Christmas light glow and icicles on eaves and snow that falls like stars. “You really went to prison?”

Bronn freezes, as static as the still and silent trees lining the sidewalk, on hand in his pocket digging for his keys, the other clasped in hers. It definitely wasn’t something he planned on sharing with her, not over darts and certainly not any time soon, but she somehow tugs on him with those looks of hers, clever eyes and sly mouth, princess sighs and that high class way she walks. _Watch her turn around and walk right on out of my life,_ he thinks. _I guess I didn’t keep her for long._

“Yeah,” he says finally, and when she asks he tells her the truth, that it was because of beating the shit out of his mother’s boyfriend when he threatened her almost two decades ago.

“And you were willing to go back there, just for little old me?” she says, dropping her gaze to the sidewalk under their feet as she takes a couple of steps towards him, her toes squaring up with his.

“I guess I was,” he says slowly. Suddenly it doesn’t feel so cold out here, anymore.

“Well,” she says, the air between them clouded with their breath. Finally she lifts her chin, shakes her hair out of her eyes as she slides her arms up and over his shoulders, taking that final step that cinches them together. Her high heels bring her that much closer to him, and his heart pounds when he lifts a hand to run his cold fingers through her hair. “I have to say, that’s probably the nicest Christmas gift anyone’s ever gotten me.”

“Yeah?” he says.

“Mmhmm,” she says with a nod, her eyes a wander across his face, from his eyes down to his mouth, and there is a hot, deeply satisfied sort of bloom inside him like the rise of steam off that tea she likes to drink, because he knows what _that_ look means. It means she is hungry for him, maybe even as hungry as he is. “And I think I’ve got just the gift for you,” she says.

“Yeah?” he repeats, or at least he thinks he does. Somewhere down the street, someone is playing Christmas music at full blast, and though he’s never been all that fond of it, right now it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever heard.

Instead of answering him with words she simply nods as her cold hands meet at the back of his neck, and she’s a stretch up while tugging him down, he’s the brushing of his thumb across her cheek when he’s finally got the taste of her, here.  It’s something shallow and sweet at first, breathless in its own fragile way, bubbles on a breeze before they pop. But then she sighs and leans into him, drags him down even closer as her mouth opens against his, and he cups her face in his hands, more warmth than chill now that his pulse is racing.

She’s a whimper when their tongues touch and slide and part again, her fingers curling in his hair, nails a light drag on his scalp that sends a long shiver down his spine and pebbles his skin even under so many thick layers. And that reminds him, makes him wrap his arms around her.

“You’ve got to be freezing out here,” he says against her mouth, between small kisses, little seals of approval, small like buttons and just as ensnaring. She’s always cold, it seems, and he’ll be damned if he’s not the one responsible for warming her up this time. “We should go inside.”

“But I don’t want to stop kissing you,” she whispers, making him laugh.

“I never said anything about stopping, duchess,” he says, bending his knees to get a tighter wrap of his arms around her waist, hauling her up, making her squeal and bury her face against his shoulder as he turns and carries her up the porch steps.

“What are you thinking about,” she asks later when they’re in one of her infamous blanket heaps here on the couch where she sleeps, here where he doesn’t really want her sleeping, anymore, not when she is such a delicious fit in his bed, not when she is probably used to silk sheets and satin robes. He wonders if she is high maintenance. Part of him wants to learn how to maintain her.

He’s pouring her another glass of champagne from the bottle she swiped from her old apartment during the last clothing run she made, and he huffs a laugh when he twists on the sofa to face her and pass her the glass. She’s drawing a heart in a little fog cloud on the window behind the sofa, something she’s done before but is starting to mean something to him now. Margie very nearly blushes when she catches him watching her, though that could be the light from Sansa’s little Christmas tree pinking her cheeks.

“I’m thinking about roses,” he grins after a minute, taking a long, fizzy swallow of champagne. He’s never bought a woman flowers in his whole life, but then he’s never really gotten involved with a woman like her. _First time for everything._ Margie smiles, a slow spread like a summer sunset.

“Oh, really. You know, I never did tell you my favorite color,” she says with a slow sip, her head tipping to the side. “Did I, Mr. I-Like-Grey,” she says, running her fingers down his arm, plucking at the cuff of his sweater of the same shade.

“Nope,” he says, wondering what her hands would feel like on his skin. “Tell me.”

“Okay,” she says, scooting herself over and onto his lap and setting her glass on the window sill behind him. _Finally_ he has the weight of her, here under all these damned blankets, here where it smells like her, here where he digs a hand through the layers of quilts and comforters to find her hip. “I love all of them.”

Bronn laughs.

“Well then I’m _really_ glad we weren’t playing for money,” he says with a tug to her hair, slouching beneath her when she plucks his glass from his hand and bends her body over him.

Once more she calls him Bronny, though it’s not sounding quite as ridiculous as it did the first time. Once more he’s got the taste of her kiss and the slide of her tongue, though now he has a two-handed lazy roam of touch up her back and the arching of her spine under his fingers. Once more he hears the happy whimpers she makes, though he vows that one of these days he’s going to earn the chance to make her scream.

 _One_ of these days. Because for now he’s busy enjoying what’s turning out to be the best Christmas gift _he’s_ ever gotten, and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/136048482513/a-cigarette-in-december-chapter-4-written-for)

“No, I’m still sleeping on the sofa,” Margaery says into the phone, leaning over the edge of the bathtub just in case. She laughs at Sansa’s scoffing reply. “I can’t just invite myself into his room, San. We’ve barely even- I mean, I don’t know. It’s all sort of strange and wonderful. I don’t even know what to call it. Us, I mean,” she says, lifting her free hand out of the bathwater to inspect her skin for pruning. She hasn’t been soaking for long, but she fully intends to lounge here for as long as Bronn’s errands take him, otherwise she’d just sit and stare out the window waiting for him.

“Well I’m just excited there  _is_  an ‘us’ with you two. He’s been absolutely, adorably not like his usual self since you moved in,” Sansa says cheerfully amidst the background raucous of family, and the audial reminder that Margaery’s been basically disowned is only  _slightly_  heartbreaking, today. 

“What’s his usual self?” Margie says, happy for the lovely distraction, eager to let him consume her thoughts.  _Sit tight, sweetheart, I’ll go get us some food and be right back._  She drops her hand back into the milk-white scented water and scooches down as low as she can without getting her phone wet.

“Oh, I don’t know. More sarcastic and aloof. Kind of like a housecat, and now you’ve turned him into a sweet little puppy dog.”

Both girls laugh, though Margie is fairly sure she’s the only one beaming with happiness despite what today is. If all had gone according to plan, she and Joffrey would be boarding a plane to Paris right now, the start of a two week honeymoon. It’s strange, to think that she’s happier here in this old apartment than she’d be sitting in first class next to her new husband. It’s strange, to not really think of him, anymore. But her headspace is full from another man, lately. Smirking smile, strong hands, hungry mouth.  _Oh, his mouth._ Margaery closes her eyes.

“Hey, sorry to do this, but we’re playing cards right now, and if I don’t take my turn my sister’s demanding I forfeit,” Sansa says. “Hey, quit it!”

“No worries, I’ve got a good long bath to look forward to. You two have fun up there,” she says, opening her eyes as she lifts a leg out of the water, wiggling her toes. Honeymoon pedicure and leg wax, all for nothing.  _Or maybe not?_

“Oh I will,” Sansa whispers into the phone. “If you’ve never seen a grown man get nervous just introduce him to your parents.”

Margie smiles, remembering the way Bronn flipped her mother the bird and drove away from her the first time they met. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’ll see you in a week. And move your stuff into his room!” Sansa says rapid-fire quick before hanging up the phone.

Margaery leans forward to set her phone on the closed toilet seat, watches the steam rise off her damp skin before she slides back down into the hot water. She lets loose a long sigh of luxury, of want, of merry confusion and so many skin-prickling unknowns before she slouches down until her head is completely submerged.  _I need a job. I probably need an apartment and furniture to fill it,_ she thinks underwater, and then she smiles, popping back up with a rush of air through her nose, because here he is again, slinking through her thoughts.  _But I don’t need a Bronn, because I think I’ve already got one._

She’s fooled around with older guys before, a teaching assistant her sophomore year of college and a financial advisor she met at the gym six weeks before she met Joff. But she’s never been with an ex-convict before, and she finds herself daydreaming about what it must have looked like, a worked up, handcuffed Bronn being hauled off to jail. He’s a bad boy and she loves it, loves the thrill of that knowledge when he kisses her, and  _oh_  how he’s kissed her, these past couple of days. They’ve not gotten much farther than that but she’s antsy at the thought of it, fidgeting like a thoroughbred at the start line, fingers itching to make him come undone, to make him simply—

 _I can be a bad girl too,_  she thinks, picking up her bar of soap to lather it between her hands.  _I can be as bad as I want to be, because now I’m free._

Her phone dings with one and then two text messages but she ignores them as she soaps up her arms, her belly and back and chest, pretending her hands are his, but she freezes when she hears the front door open, is half terrified of burglars and  _other_ kinds of ex-xcons until she hears him speak.

“I left my fucking wallet here,” Bronn calls out with the slam of the door. “I was standing there at the checkout like an idiot when I realized. Hey, Margie girl, where are you? You seen a wallet around here?” he says, his voice increasing in volume as he walks across the room, and she is about to call out to him when the bathroom door opens. “Maybe I left it on the- oh, shit,” he says.

He fills the doorway in a leather jacket and scarf, snow still in his hair though it’s a rapid melt now that he is confronted with so much warm air and steam, and he is stopped dead in his tracks as he stares down at her. His jaw is slack and his mouth is open and his eyes are so dark they’re almost black. His chest heaves, once, when he appears to remember to breathe.

“No wallet here,” she murmurs, her sudsy hands cupping her breasts, hovering somewhere between the actions of washing and hiding them. Her heart beats so fast she feels faint, feels as slippery as that bar of soap sitting on its little shelf.

“No clothes, either,” he says, voice dropped as low as his gaze when he looks down, down, down. Suddenly he starts, shakes his head and turns on his heel, dragging his fingers through his hair. “Christ, Margie, I’m sorry, I’m a jackass. I’ll get the fuck out of here,” he says, hand already on the door to pull it closed behind him.

“Bronn, wait,” she says before she thinks, her open mouth a betrayal to the budding of her heart, of  _craving_. Hastily she licks her lips as she stares at his back and wills him to face her again. “Don’t- don’t go.”

The last time she invited him in, it was for something mostly innocent, half asleep and partly a dream, but she’s got other things in mind now, and he seems to know it. She listens to him inhale and sigh out as he takes a single backwards step to close the door in front of him. He keeps his palm pressed to it next to the towel hanging from its hook. She wants that hand on  _her_ , and if she has to coax and maybe beg, well then fine, but she is used to getting what she wants.

“Why’s that?” he murmurs, hand sliding down as he slowly,  _agonizingly_  turns to face her, arms crossing over his chest as he leans against the closed door and lifts his eyes from the floor to her. Guarded, instantly. Holding himself in, when all she wants is for that bad boy to let himself go and come after her. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

“Because I want you, Bronny,” she whispers, lowering her hands down into the water, baring herself utterly to him.

He sucks an inhale through his teeth as he flicks his gazes down, closes his eyes with another shake of his head, but if she’s worried he’s going to suddenly turn tail and flee, it’s for nothing, because the only move he makes is to unwind the scarf from around his neck.

“You trying to torture me, Margie? Is that it, hmm?” he says, dropping the scarf onto the sink, the leather jacket soon to follow. Bronn pushes the sleeves of his black thermal shirt up to his elbows.

“Far from it,” she says, leaning back until she’s reclining against the sloped porcelain back of the bath, and she channels her inner Cleopatra as she lifts an arm from the water to drape it on the edge of the tub.  _Feast on me,_  she wants to say, but the skip and slip of her heart is too much for such bravado.

“You’re a fool if you don’t think this is torturing me right now,” he says, taking the two slow steps necessary to bring him right next to her. Bronn lowers down into a squat next to the tub, his elbow resting on his cocked out knee as his hand hovers over the opaque water that hides her belly from view.

“You could join me then," she says, voice a thin warble, chest rising and falling in rapid succession from the nearness of him.

Bronn exhales a chuckle. He does not look at her, or at least, not at her face, when he lets his hand sink down into the water, the backs of his knuckles brushing against her ribs and down into the dip of her waist. It is Margie’s turn to sigh.

“I don’t think I’d fit, duchess,” he says, turning his hand to press his palm against her belly, to let it skate up through soap and lavender oil, only to stop at the underswell of her left breast.

“That’s too bad,” she whispers, tipping her head back until it bumps the tile behind her with a soft thud. As if by its own volition her body moves, arching to bring itself higher up into his touch.

“Christ,” he mutters, finally lifting his hand to cup her breast, to knead and squeeze with an increasing firmness that flirts deliciously with pain before it subsides, making her moan for more. “Good goddamn, woman.”  

“Please don’t stop,” she says, voice soft like the steam that lifts and curls from his wrist as he moves the touch and the squeeze to her other breast.  

“Not until you beg me,” he affirms, and she closes her eyes when his other hand, previously dry, dips down into the water. “I want to make your legs shake,” he whispers with a hiss, skimming a light touch down to her hip and then past it, down and up the tops of both her thighs until his hand sinks down between them.                                     

“Oh my god,” she whispers, lifting her arm so she can run her hand through his hair, closing her eyes when his fingers find her.

“Say my name,” he says, voice so deep it’s a growl, almost, as he works into her, fingers curling high and pressing, making her whimper. “Say my name when you come, Margaery, and only then.”

It doesn’t take much, considering how coiled up and wound up she’s been around him, and when he moves his hand from inside to out, when he rubs his middle finger against her, her knees rise up and out of the water, toes braced against the bottom of the tub as she arches her back and opens her eyes.

He’s watching her, and he’s no housecat but some sort of jungle beast, dark eyed and menacing and lethal, his jaw muscles tight as the steady of his gaze bores right into her. Her head sags to the side as she looks back at him, and she can feel the desperate sort of pleading look she’s giving him. Bronn squeezes her breast again and that’s it, she will turn into milk and honey, soap and scented oil with one more flick of his finger, and she nods vigorously before crying out.

“Yes,” she pants, her knees trembling, her mouth opening with a high gasp as he slides, slides, slides his finger down and up, over and over, hard and then soft, light and then dark. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Say it,” he commands, voice a gritted strain. “Say it for me.”

“Bronn,” she says, legs quaking so hard the bathwater has turned to a sea at storm. “Oh my god, Bronn, yes, oh god, Bronn, yes.”

“There’s a good girl,” he says, still moving his hand though sensations have exploded beyond hypersensitivity, and she slides a hand down to cover and still his movement, though the knead and pinch and squeeze of his hand on her breasts can keep going for all she cares.

“I’m  _not_  good. I’m bad like you,” she murmurs, smiling weakly, making him laugh, though it’s far more breathless than his usual barks. There’s a little bit of power for her, there, how she’s taking him apart too.

“Then prove it, baby,” he says as he stands, shaking the water from his hand before he licks his fingers, his eyes never leaving hers. Margie swallows, hard.

They abandon the bath, Bronn holding her hand as she steps out onto the bathmat, but when she reaches out to try and grab a towel he snares her with the grasp of her wrist and pulls her towards him.

 “I don’t have time for that shit,” he says, dropping her arm on his shoulder, repeating it with her other arm on the other side of his head. He only takes his eyes off her when he glances to the medicine cabinet, wrenches it open and rifles around.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, palming a condom and shutting the mirror back in place. He grins down at her. “You’ve got me so hard it hurts. Hold on to me, now. You’re slippery like a fish,” he says, and when she obediently cinches her arms around his neck he stoops and hauls her up into his arms, his thermal shirt plastering to his chest from the damp of her.

“I’m wet all over,” she whispers into his ear before nipping his earlobe and drawing it into her mouth.

“Good.”

The air in the rest of the house is warm but against her bath-heated skin it’s downright chilly, and she squeals from it, squeezes her thighs around him, digs her heels into his low back until he groans. Bronn kicks open his half shut bedroom door, takes two long strides before he throws her down onto his bed, naked and wet and  _thrilled._ Margie scrambles back into the pillows, reaching under them to yank down the covers and slip between them. She is still throbbing from his administrations, but she’s always been a little bit greedy, and there is no exception to that rule with Bronn. If anything, it’s worse.

“Don’t cover yourself up now, I’m just getting started,” Bronn says, reaching back to tug his shirt off over his head, tossing it to the floor before unzipping his pants and stepping out of them.

“I’m cold,” she reminds him with a grin, pointing a finger at him over the edge of his comforter.

“Not for long,” he says, shimmying out of his boxers before crawling in after her. Bronn tears into the condom wrapper using his teeth, savagery and impatience, all of it painfully arousing, all of it so wonderfully telltale. He’s not a puppy for her now. He is a wolf, and he is ravenous.

“ _And_  I’m wet,” she says, shivering delightfully from anticipation once he rolls onto his side, up and on top of her after dragging away the sheets that cling to her drying skin. Bronn buries his face between her breasts with a moan, hands busy with them as he licks and sucks one and then the other.

“And  _I’m_  going to make sure you stay that way,” he says, settling himself between her thighs, hitching one of her legs up and over his hip.

And he does, right from the start, from that first hard push inside that fills her up and burns away every last thought inside her head. This is consumption and devour and rapacity, and mercy and meek are nowhere to be seen or felt as Bronn pumps into her. It is the most tantalizing thing, the way he fucks her, and she thinks of words like possession and ownership, thinks of words like conquer and pillage and blaze. Margaery moans, digs her nails into his shoulder blades and drags them down his back until he grunts from the pain and grabs her wrist, slapping it down and pinning it to the pillow above her head.

“Rough little thing,” he says, lifting his head to look down at her, slowing his pace to study her. He grins suddenly, savagely. “I like it.”

“I  _love_  it,” she says, using her free hand to pull him down by the nape of his neck so she can kiss him, so she can devour him too. “Now get back to work.”

“Yes  _ma’am,_ ” he says against her mouth, and he lowers his head to kiss her throat, to bite her so firmly she nearly screams.

Her hands are braced against the headboard and her legs are flung over his shoulders when he makes her come the second time. She cries out his name between ragged  _Oh my gods_  and breathless, dry-throat  _Yeses_ , the slick of bathwater replaced with the sheen of her sweat and his, because he was right, she didn’t stay cold for long. The sheets and comforter are a tangled mess at the foot of the bed, and the air is filled with the scent of lavender, with the sounds of his dirty talk and his groans.

“Yeah, fuck me back, just like that,” he grits out, eyes rolling back in his head when she squeezes herself around him. “I’ve wanted to- ever since I laid eyes on you, I- oh fuck,” he says on a staccato exhale, holding himself up on one elbow as he reaches up to grab onto the top of his headboard. Bronn slows down now that his movements have become irregular, wild jerks of his hips and hard thrusts, but the slowdown is too much like a comedown. She wants him torn apart like she is. Margie squirms.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, please, come for me. Come for me, please Bronn,” she says, so urgent it’s almost a shout, and it is most definitely a beg. There’s something wickedly wonderful about pleading with him, there’s something delicious about this dance of power they have between them. She knows now he’ll probably do anything she asks, but she also knows he’d have no problem forcing her to her knees before saying  _Sure, duchess, I’ll do it._ “Please, Bronn,” she says again, making him hum with approval.

“ _Yes,_ Margie,” he says before a shuddering series of thrusts that make her say  _Oh_  in time to them, louder and higher until the word becomes nothing more than a gasp for air.

One more rock of his hips as he kisses her, the flush of orgasm drawing it out so it’s long and deep and slow, the handwritten signature at the end of some steamy, salacious love letter. She lets go of the headboard to card her fingers through his hair, and they make minor adjustments so she can lower her legs from his shoulders. Her muscles ache. Everything is one sweet throb. She feels like her body has finally been used the right way, to its full and perfect potential _. Move over, Cleopatra._

“Beautiful girl,” he says finally, some of that rough animal tumble leeched from his voice now that they’re an exhausted, panting tangle of limbs. Bronn kisses her chest before moving off of her and onto his back next to her. “Where the hell did you even come from, hmm?”

“The other side of the tracks,” she grins. “But I have no intention of going back. Not after  _that_ ,” she says, tipping her head to press her cheek to the pillow and watch as he laughs.

“Happy to hear it,” he says, turning and kissing her before he sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m not itching to get my heart broken anytime soon.”

Margie bites her lip at  _that_ , smiles as she watches him get up and leave the room, sits up herself to fix the mess of sheets and covers hanging off the mattress, pulls them up and over her as she burrows down in his bed. It’s not even four in the afternoon but the light outside is a fading, pale gray tinged with the white of snow, and she hopes they spend the whole day and night tucked up in here. When she hears the tub drain she scoots out of the middle of the bed in anticipation of his return, her gaze a wander until it alights on his nightstand. She laughs.

“Hey, Bronny, I found your wallet.”

“Fuck my wallet,” he calls out cheerfully from the main room, and she blinks and double-takes when he appears in the doorway, naked as a blue jay with her unzipped suitcase balanced in his arms. “I found something better,” he says with a grin, crossing the room and dropping her suitcase on the floor next to his dresser.

“What’re you doing?” she murmurs, her heart a merry little lick of flame, and she smiles as he comes back to her, all muscle and sinew and predator-lithe as he walks on his knees up the bed. He scoops her close with an arm around her once he’s under the covers with her, and she happily curls up against his side with her head on his chest.

“Sandor didn’t think I’d do it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t,” he says, kissing her temple, his hand a southerly drift until he cups her ass and gives it a squeeze.

“What do you mean?” she asks, and she feels like a hum, a long steady hum, the sound of a smile, the curl of pleasure. Possession. Ownership. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

“I’m keeping you, duchess, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/151162795848/a-cigarette-in-december-chapter-5-hes-smoking)

He’s smoking by the Bentley when she steps out of the downtown building and it feels an awful lot like the first time they met, though enough things are different to make this a decidedly _better_ day than that cold December afternoon. For starters she’s smiling, is all blonde, tailored-jacket radiance as she thanks the man holding the door for her and then lifts her gaze to latch it onto Bronn. And then there’s the fact that they’ve been together for months and he’s managed to not fuck it all up like the half dozen other relationships he’s had as an adult.

And there’s also the fact that he told her he was in love with her last night and she said it right back.

“So how’d it go?” he asks, grinning as he flicks his cigarette butt in the gutter and pushes himself out of his lean against the rental car.

“I got the job!” Margaery says with a happy beam, and she’s all Mary Tyler Moore as she flings her arms up in the air and spins around on those red-soled high heels he requests she wear to bed from time to time.

“Of course you did, sugar. They’d be a bunch of fucking idiots if they didn’t hire you,” he says as he steps away from the curb towards her.

Because he knows her pretty well at this point, and he’s ready and waiting with outstretched arms when she traipses out of her twirl and launches herself at him. Margie wraps her arms around his neck and he follows suit with his around her waist, and she’s trembling like a leaf from her elation. Laughter, breathless and airy and giddy like champagne in a bubble bath, warm and inviting with a kiss to the raspy scruff on his cheek before she draws back to kiss him properly on the mouth.

“We need to celebrate,” she murmurs, fingers in his hair at the nape of his neck as she sighs happily and kisses him again, a good deep tongue-stroke of a kiss that’s got him thinking maybe that champagne and bath thing will happen, but then she draws back again. “I’m thinking a big steakhouse dinner and dancing or something. What do you think, Bronny?”

Ah, he thinks with disappointment as he chuckles and gazes at her. Something fancier than a sexy night in, then.

“I think that sounds just about perfect,” he lies with a smile and a quick squeeze of her ass before they pull apart.

Because dropping a couple hundred bucks for dinner and another fifty for cover charges and shitty expensive drinks is the exact opposite of what he wants to do. But saying no to Margaery is not something he’s ever gotten really _good_ at, despite all the other ways he’s gained experience in this relationship. Make tea the way she likes it? Check. Pause the TV show when she says she’ll be right back but then gets distracted for ten minutes? Check. Get her wet and get her off in a relatively short amount of time? Fuck yeah, check. But deny her something she wants?

 Bronn: 3 Failure: 1.

“When do you start? Tomorrow?”

“No, they’re giving me the weekend to prepare. I’m not Executive Art Director of _Highgarden Magazine_ until Monday.”

“Well then we better get busy celebrating,” he says, turning to open the passenger side door.

“Yes, sir,” she says loftily as she bobs a curtsy best she can in that tight pin-striped skirt before ducking down to get in the car.

“Save the sexy talk for the bedroom, kitten.”

He drives them home and they shower and change in turns, and even though she showered first she’s still futzing around in their bedroom with her shoes or her dress or her hair or her makeup. He’s sitting on the couch next to Sansa, who’s got one leg draped over Sandor’s shoulder while he sits on the floor in front of her. Never in his entire goddamn life did he think he’d watch Sandor paint a woman’s toenails before but he’s watching it now rather than the episode of _Jessica Jones_ they’ve got on, it’s that fucking surreal. But then again, Sansa’s about forty months pregnant and probably hasn’t been able to see her feet in weeks, let alone reach them.

“So you’re still going through with it?” Sandor asks after a few minutes of silence, speaking more to Sansa’s hot pink toes than to Bronn, he’s that focused as he scrutinizes his handiwork.

“Yeah.”

“You know you don’t have to, Bronn,” Sansa says with a frown as she turns to gaze at him. “I’d hate for you to think we’re forcing you to.”

“No, no, I want to, really. That little munchkin of yours is just providing a much needed deadline. It’s high time.”

“And _I’m_ Highgarden,” Margaery says with a dramatic pose in their bedroom doorway before she bursts out laughing, wind chime and water as she walks into the room. “You ready, baby?”

Bronn lets loose a low whistle and briefly considers howling at her like she’s the moon, she’s that done up. He’s in his best suit but there’s no way he can hold a candle to her. She looks like she was poured in that lacy black dress, and she looks like a million bucks. He’s always felt a little like Oliver Twist when it comes to her, some grubby, grabby-handed street urchin who somehow got lucky enough to find a bright shiny penny on an otherwise hard and ugly street. It’s never bothered him before and it doesn’t bother him now, but it’s moments like these where the richness of her personality, the quality and the wealth of every fiber of her all serve to remind him that luck can, and often does, eventually run out.

Doesn’t mean he’s not going to enjoy every minute of it until it does.

“I was born ready,” he says as he gets to his feet. “Come on fancy executive lady, let’s go eat meat and get drunk.”

“God, that sounds like _so_ much fun,” Sansa says with a sigh as she gazes up at the pair of them with a hungry, wistful look in her eye.

“Two more weeks, sunshine,” Sandor mutters from where he’s painstakingly painting her pinky toenail. “I’ll get you shitfaced once that little guy pops out.”

“Sandor, you are _such_ a romantic,” Margaery laughs with a roll of her eyes as Bronn helps her into her coat.

“He is, isn’t he,” Sansa says fondly.

“Lucky, is what he is,” Bronn says as they step outside. And so am I, still.

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Sandor says, giving Sansa’s leg a pat. “All right now, give me the other foot.”

Bronn takes the Bentley again to class up the evening without spending a cent, and Margaery orders a gin and tonic and the lobster bisque to start, debates over whether or not they should also get oysters Rockefeller on top of it all.

“I’ll uh, I’ll just stick with the bread and water, thanks,” he says, slapping the menu shut when the waiter nods and drifts off.

Margaery frowns. “What’s going on? You normally eat like a trucker.”

“I wanted to be a trucker when I was a kid, you know.”

He imagines if he’d followed through with that vocation, wonders if he’d ever wind up driving his truck across Margie’s path.

“Yes, I know that,” she says, waving her hand in the air impatiently. “But seriously, are you okay? Don’t you feel well?”

“I feel great, duchess, don’t worry about me. I want you to have a good night. You’ve been job hunting for fucking months,” he says, ignoring the waiter’s flinch as the reedy kid sets down the complimentary bread and herbed butter.

“I’m not going to have any fun if you’re not going to party with me,” she says, smiling her thanks when the kid sets down her gin and tonic. “So come on now, spill it. What’s up?”

Bronn sighs and rubs his eyes with a thumb and forefinger before he sits up and reaches out for her drink. She tries to slap him away but he’s too quick for her, and they grin at each other while he takes two swallows of liquor.

“I’m just trying to save money, that’s all. I don’t make all that much of it, to be honest.”

Margaery stares at him opened mouthed a moment before she throws her head back and laughs.

“Oh my god, Bronn, did- you didn’t think I was going to make _you_ pay for this dinner, did you?”

“Well,” he says, feeling a prickle of embarrassment. “You haven’t had a job since before I met you. I just sort of figured, you know?”

“I still have a credit card, dummy,” she says with another chuckle as she commandeers her drink with the stretch of her arm and the tinkle of three silver bracelets on her arm. “I would never tell you to go out and drop a bunch of money on me.”

“I would, though. Hell, I thought I was now. Excuse me, can I get what she’s drinking? Actually she’s paying, so get me everything she’s having plus those oysters rutabaga or whatever,” Bronn says when the waiter drifts by.

Margie laughs. “It’s Rockefeller, and yes, please.” They’re grinning at each other across the table as Bronn tears into the hunk of bread, but then Margaery’s expression sobers somewhat. “Are things at work okay though? I mean, I know tonight will be expensive but in the grand scheme of things one fancy shouldn’t like, dry up the coffers completely, right?”

Bronn smiles. It is typical Margaery, all let them eat cake in one moment and then genuine concern the next, an overflow of extravagance even when it comes to kindness.

“No, honey, work is fine. Everything’s fine,” he says, and he takes a deep breath like he’s about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake, because he’s definitely wishing, right now. “I want to move out.”

“W-what?” she says with a confused falter and hard frown creasing her forehead. “Um, like what? You want to move out? A-are you _dumping_ me? Today? Of _all_ days?”

“What? Fuck, _no_ , Margie,” he says as the waiter sets down his gin and tonic, and he fumbles at the swear word and slops gin on the table. “Oh for fuck’s sake, man, you gotta get over it,” Bronn says with an exasperated sigh.

“You’re not dumping me but you want to move out?” Margaery says, her body moving the way it does when she’s got her legs crossed as is bobbing her foot.

It’s what she does when she’s pissed.

Bronn acts quickly. He is not interested in Failure: 2.

“I want _us_ to move out. Together. Very much together and _not_ dumped. Sansa’s about to pop and they can talk about co-sleeping or whatever the hell it is all they want, but that kid’s gonna need a bedroom. Jesus, woman, I just told you I was—” Bronn leans forward and lowers his voice. “I just told you I was in _love_ with you. Why would I dump you the next day?”

“Joffrey cheated on me _on our wedding day,_ ” Margie points out, complete with the point of her finger at him.

“Thank Christ for that. Joffrey is a fucking cunt, Margie. Now I’m no angel, but please tell me you know I’m not that fucking bad.”

Her expression softens like a pat of butter on warm toast, a nice melt of temper that leaves a sweet look in its wake, the retreat of glacier leaving behind a meadow full of wildflowers. Christ. He really _is_ in love with her.

“Of course I know you’re not that bad,” Margie murmurs, and she uncrosses her legs and leans forward to take him by the hand here between the votive candle and the salt and pepper shakers. “I’m sorry, I panicked. Everything was falling into place with the job and income so I can finally contribute, and it was all starting to feel real and homey and I- you know, I thought my luck had run out just when I thought I had it all.”

Bronn smiles. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” He squeezes her hand and uses his free one to lift his drink to his mouth, and he takes a long sip as he gazes at her. “So,” he says as he sets his G&T back down.

“So,” Margaery says, almost shy as she lowers her gaze and fiddles with her silverware. “So you want to move in together in our own place?”

“More than that,” he says, and here’s the real reason he’s been pinching pennies. “I know it’s a big step, duchess, but I’ve never felt about any girl the way I feel about you,” and that’s when Margaery wrenches her hand out of his, presses both hands to her mouth and gasps so loud it’s almost like a shriek.

“Oh my god, are you asking me to _marry_ you?” High pitched squeak of shock and, if he’s not mistaken, terror?

Bronn goggles at her.

Failure: 2.

“Jesus Christ, Margie, would you stop jumping to fucking conclusions? All I want to do is buy a house with you. You are absolutely _ruining_ this right now. No dumping, no getting married,” he says, and he sits back heavily with his drink in hand when she breathes a sigh of relief and rests a hand on her heart. “Which I can see you’re happy about.”

For some reason that doesn’t sit well with him.

“Oh, stop,” Margaery says. “You have literally told me, drunk, that the idea of getting hitched makes you want to run for the hills,” she says, leaning back when their lobster bisques arrive.

“I’ll just give you two some more time to decide on your entrees,” the kid says lightly.

“Good idea,” Margaery and Bronn say in unison, and then they both fall silent for several moments.

“It’s just that the last wedding I went to left a bad taste in my mouth,” Margaery says finally as she drags her spoon through her soup in smaller and smaller circles. She looks up at him imploringly. “I’d rather put more time between that wedding and the next time I put on a white dress. It’s not that I don’t want to marry _you_ specifically.”

“No one is asking anyone to get married!” he says a little overloud thanks to the gin, maybe. Maybe.

“I know! I just want to make sure you don’t think I wouldn’t marry you if you asked.”

“Woman, you haven’t even said if you’d buy a house with me. Am I saving up for a fancy pants place worthy of you for fuckin’ nothing, or are you gonna, you know, come with me?” he says, and he’s never been suave but he’s sure as hell smoother than this, and the fact that he’s all out of whack irritates him.

But his heart races, because he understands full well what she just told him, and there is something wildly thrilling, to know that information.

“Well when you put it so _nicely,_ how can I say no?” Margaery says with the upward lift of her chin. “And when I tell you what my salary is you won’t be so worried about saving your money.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm,” she hums with a grin, and she stands and walks around the table to whisper the sum in his ear as he finishes his cocktail.

 Bronn chokes on his drink.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” he says as he stares up at her, and she nods, and because they’ve already caused a complete scene, Bronn puts his drink down and pulls her into his lap.

She comes willingly and with a squeal in the back of her throat and she laughs as she takes his napkin and wipes the gin off his chin.

“I kept telling you it would be worth the wait. I may have quit my old job to be Joffrey’s little housewife, but I left with stellar recommendations.”

“Duchess, _I’ll_ be your little housewife now,” Bronn says, reaching up with a hand to the back of her head to pull her down for a kiss.

“You’d have to ask me to marry you, first,” she whispers against his mouth.

Bronn laughs and kisses her, his hands a roam as the kiss turns to a full on makeout session, and she tastes like home because she is.

Failure: back to 1.


End file.
